


The Minutes mean so Little

by ColeCzos



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-22
Updated: 2016-01-22
Packaged: 2018-05-15 13:48:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5787532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ColeCzos/pseuds/ColeCzos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A writing experiment, watching the commonwealth change through the eyes of a bystander with a storied background and personal biases.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Minutes mean so Little

The air was still and dead, the soft crunch of dirt trodden upon by boots one of the few sounds breaking the silence. The wind on occasion would lend its voice, sending shrill creaks as it passed by long dead trees. The calm silence was a blessing for the man walking down this seldom trodden path. The small comfort that it was however was not enough to dull his senses however.

His eyes glanced back and forth from the sides of the path, watching carefully for any sign of the danger that he knew lurked in these woods. As he walked, he readjusted the weapon slung over his shoulder, a large bulky piece of equipment. The weapon was a comfort to him, but it's hastily repaired form spoke little for its reliability. The man showed how little he relied upon the larger weapon when he happened upon the first physical sign of danger on this path.

A the coppery smell of gore, accompanied by the stench of gore. Ahead of him off to the side of the path was a tree given new color to its blackened trunk by a splatter of blood. Its bark maimed by long vicious claws, leaving behind deep gouges. The man’s hand went to the weapon at his hip, a small thing to be sure, but it had seen him through many perils faithfully. The man paused his steps as he looked around, his fears heightened by this new evidence of the deadly wildlife. A few moments of observation however left him with no new sign of his impending doom. The blood and cuts on the tree were relatively fresh, but not recent enough for the creature responsible for them to still be nearby.

With a sigh and shake of his head, the man resumed his walk down the path, hand still resting on his holstered weapon. The man’s breath hung on the air in a smoky haze, the air chilling with the waning of the sun. His pace quicked slightly, not wishing to remain in this dead forest without the light of the sun to give him comfort. The man closed his coat tighter around him to stave off the cold.

“Come on, I don’t remember this hole of a town being this deep in the woods.” The man grumbled under his breath, the cold doing nothing to improve his mood. He did not have long to simmer in his irritation however, as over the tops of the trees he began to make out the sight of smoke in the sky.

“Oh finally, glad to see this place is still doing well then.” The man muttered, a slight smile coming to his face as he further quicked his pace. As he continued closer to the settlement, the top of the old pre war stone tower peaked above the trees. Memories of the town’s initial construction came to his mind, a fond recollection of a warm stew coming to the forefront of his thoughts. All of those pleasant feelings were shattered when he came into the clearing and saw the source of the smoke.

As he looked upon the still flaming pile of wreckage the smile quickly found its way off of his face. Strewn over the railings of one of the buildings was the body of a settler, blood dripping off the woman’s pale fingertips. The man stumbled into the clearing, surprised and horrified by what he saw. He quickly hurried over to the building where the woman’s body lay limp. His hurried footsteps sending loud creaks as he stepped upon the salvaged wood that made up most of the structure. As he reached the woman, he pulled her off of the railing and set her body down, trying to see if she was somehow still alive even as he knew that such a thought was a juvenile hope. He brushed the bangs out of her face, he saw lifeless eyes stare back up at him, and the memory of the first time he met this woman came back to him. Her current visage was a mockery of the life filled eyes that he remembered, he blood splattered face seeming to look up at him in horror.

As he cleared his throat to steady his nerves, he closed the woman’s eyes, not being able to bear the cold gaze that they set upon him. The man shakily stood up, and looked around the rest of the small town, and he saw similar bodies lying strewn around. He knew for certain now that this town deep in the world had been ended by violent means. The bodies were in too many pieces for wildlife to have done it, and the sight of bullet holes in the young woman’s body brought him to the realization of who did this. Raiders.

“You better not just be being lazy coming to get the rest of us, Havoc told you and your boys to gut this town not us.” A rough and heartless, but distant voice spoke from behind the man.

“Hey, we already looked through the place and torched everything not worth taking, I woulda thought you’d be all for getting a cut of the loot. But hey, I could just take it for myself if you want to bitch that much.” Another, this time more feminine voice replied.

The man was hiding within the shack at the sound of the first voice, and by the time the second spoke he was peering through a crack in the boards. His eyes confirmed what he already knew, the figures walking towards the town in scraped together armor could be only one type of monster.

“Alright, fine ya bitch, lets just grab the goods from this place and get the hell out. I don’t want to be around when the ‘Claws round here get scent of all the bodies.” As the first one spoke again, the man could better make out just who was speaking now.

Two raiders walked ahead of a larger group, looking to be around six or seven in total. The small merciless band pushed jockeyed and made crude jokes to one another as they walked towards the dead town. The man did his best to remain out of sight as he tried to make his way out back into the forest. With any luck, he would be able to lose them among the trees even if they did manage to see him. As the man started to move, the conversation between the raiders continued.

“Oh shut up you pussy, the smoke should keep em off the scent of the bodies long enough for us to get in and out. Besides, my boys’ve been looking out to make sure nothing showed up to pick over the town before we did.” The man froze as he heard the female raider speak, eyes going wide as he realized just what that meant. Before he could react however, the raider raised her voice and called out.

“Hey, Mutts, where the hell are you!?” The man tried his best to scramble back into a hiding place, but the effort proved futile as a new voice replied to the raider.

“Yeah boss? We was just keeping warm by the fire, it’s getting fucking cold out here.” A figure stepped out of a building near the smoking pile of flaming debris, with a clear line of sight where the man laid crouched. The slack jawed raider stepped out into the open scratching his chin as his gaze passed over the man.

“Hey, wait a second the fuck’re you!?” The raider exclaimed, and the man knew all chance of stealth was over. Similar exclamations came from the rest of the raiders as the man went into a dead sprint. With the group behind him, and one between him and the woods there was only one real option left for him, the tower. He did his best to move faster than the raiders, but even still some of them managed to raise their weapons and fire off quick shots at the running man. The relatively light pops of their pipe rifles followed him as he ran towards his destination, many shots managing to get exceedingly close to him, but none doing much more than to bake his clothing a bit more breezy.

“Great fucking job your boys did keeping an eye on this place!” One of the raider bosses yelled in annoyance.

“Oh shut the fuck up, let's kill the scab and deal with the rest of the shit later. “ Was the quick reply from the raider, quickly cutting off any further discussion.

The man continued his run to the relative safety of the tower even as some of the raider’s shots ricocheted of of the old walls, sending out puffs of powdered stone. The man quickly scurried around once he was through the doorway, taking shelter behind the walls as more shots were poured through the doorway. The next few moments gave him a second to catch his breath and he readied his sidearm. The low hum of the weapon powering up giving him some much needed reassurance.

“God fucking dammit, stop shooting at fucking nothing!” The female raider yelled at the rest. “Someone just throw a fucking molotov and burn his ass out.”

The man had a sharp intake of breath as he heard the word Molotov, and he quickly turned towards the stairs to head further up the tower and he muttered under his breath.

“Shit shit shit, please not the fire again.” Were his words to whatever entity might be out there watching as his boots met the old stairs. Moments after he was on the flight of stairs, he heard the shattering of glass and roaring of flames behind him, the heat singing off the hairs on the back of his neck.

“Did we get him?” One of the raider lackeys asked his companions outside.

“Did you hear any fucking screaming? ‘Course we didn’t stupid, now since you wanted to open your fucking mouth you get to go in after him first.” One of the raider bosses responded, eliciting a disappointed grumbling from the first one.

As the man reached the first landing of the lower, he spun around and sighted his weapon, the green glow of its deadly energies rader to fire.

The raider cautiously peeked his head around the doorway, and in recompense for his caution was given a face full of plasma as the man fired his pistol. The raider recoiled from the shot, stumbling out of the man’s vision, but he could still hear the familiar sound of a body being turned to goo and splattering against the ground.

“Oh fucking damn it, the asshole’s got plasma. I want this scab dead now you hear me, rush his ass he can only shoot so fast.” The male raider boss ordered his lackeys, and the sound of rushing bodies signaled to the man that the tower was about to get quite a bit more crowded.

He ran up to the next landing, being made painfully aware that he was running out of tower to give, and nowhere to go once he got to the top. Thankfully for him however, his bag of tricks wasn’t emptied just yet, and as he saw a group of three raiders rush through the doorway and start looking around he grabbed a small object on his belt and pulled the pin. At least one of the raiders was familiar with the pinging sound of a pin leaving a grenade, and they did their best to run back out the doorway with an expletive leaving their lips. The press of bodies behind them however made the effort futile, and the grenade was brought down by gravity to land between their feet. A second, and a loud explosion later, the bottom floor of the tower was significantly less occupied.

“Who send you shits could stop, I want this scab dead NOW!” The male raider boss all but scream at the others. The man quickly readied his pistol again expecting more to rush in again, and they might have if it weren't for the other raider’s input.

“God damn it, why the fuck do you care so bad, the rat’s in his hole. Let's just grab the shit like Havoc told us and get the fuck out, this shit doesn’t have the balls to actually fight us.” The female raider told the first.

For a few moments, a small argument broke out, the male raider wanting blood for the boys he lost, and the female telling him he would lose a lot more before the scab died.

“Oh come on, you fucking scared of some little shit? Maybe I should tell Havoc after this you ain’t good enough to lead anything besides a bunch of radroaches?”

“I ain’t scared of fuckin’ anything, and you know that. If we keep fuckin around and makin all this noise, we’re gonna have a family of Deathclaws breathin’ down our necks.”

The male raider snorted, but did eventually say, “Fine, I’d rather not deal with those lizards. Let's just get the shit and get out.” The raider raised his voice and then addressed the man, “Hear that ya fuck, it’s your lucky day that we’ve got better shit to do, not just stay up there and wait for the ‘Claws ta drag ya out.”

The man didn’t reply to the raider, and with another snort the raider went back to addressing his boys. A few moments later, and a pair of the raider lackeys watching the tower’s only exit, the raiders went about looting the town. The man at first resigned himself to just waiting in the tower for the raiders to pick over the town and leave, a foul taste in his mouth as he remembered that it was once a place where people lived honestly. However, in his reminiscing, a memory returned to him of the fact that this tower had something at the top of it, something that’d make sure the scum of the earth outside got just what they deserved.

With a malicious grin, the man went up the stairs until he reached the top of the tower, finding another dead settler as well as what he was looking for. Walking over to the switch he rested his hand around it as he called out, “Ya know, kids like you really shouldn’t be playin’ around with Ghosts like this.”

One of the raider bosses down below looked up to the man and yelled, “The fuck are you talkin’ about just shut the fuck up before I-”

The man cut the raider off mid threat as he threw down the switch, a loud piercing siren going off. Most of the raiders looked around in confusion at the noise, but some of them knew just what the sound would bring and started running from the town. The ones that ran however, were the first to meet the source of their fear. Out of the woods a pair of Deathclaws came bounding towards the town, one of the raiders not even getting a moment to react before being sliced neatly in half. The man spent a moment looking at his work in satisfaction before sitting down to rest his legs.

He first looked up at the sky, to see the sun well since having left the sky to be replaced by the pale moon. He then looked over to his side, at the body of the man who had tried to give the raiders the end they had just received. So it was with a satisfied nod and the sounds of a band of raiders being torn apart that the man said,

“Ah, I still got it, and if any of you’re hanging around here haunting the place. Don’t worry, I took care of it for you.” With that assurance to the recently deceased, the man wraps his coat around himself and prepares to wait through the cold and windy night.


End file.
